Page 2415 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 7 August 1990
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At any rate, the Government has come down to closing six schools. How are we going to save money from them? The Minister says that a figure something above $2m will be saved, although he cannot specify it school by school. It is a bit of a guess by the sound of it but he said something over $2m. That is his data. Frances Perkins, in whom I would have more confidence, says something different. Indeed, I do not know how much confidence we can have in the Minister. He repudiated part of the Priority Review Board's report when he said that they got it wrong on special education. He has taken back the preschool task force report. Did you know that? He has taken it back because there were 52 mistakes in it. So, how much notice of the data can we take?
Mr Humphries: Typographical.
MR WOOD: Typographical?
Mr Humphries: For the most part.
MR WOOD: When I saw it, it was all relating to numbers - all relating to numbers.
Now that this Government has responded in a couple of pages - half a page per school - to the schools' cases for keeping their schools open, we get a stream of submissions from those schools saying "They're wrong. They're wrong. They've left out the special needs children at Rivett. They didn't think of these children over there. The space isn't available in Hawker for these children". Time and time again we have been shown good figures from people out there, in those schools, who know how wrong the Government is.
I want to repeat that exercise I did today. Let us start with Mr Humphries' $2m - more than $2m. He does not know how much more. Let us start with that. I sat much closer than we are now in the ABC studio and heard the Minister say $450,000 to refurbish South Curtin School. No doubt about that.
Mr Humphries: I have no recollection of that.
MR WOOD: I am amazed. Go through it; add up all those figures that I listed in question time; transportables, relocation. I also heard you say you would pay for the relocation - no, I correct myself - I heard you say that the tenants would not have to pay for the relocation. That is perhaps not quite the same as saying you would pay.
Mr Humphries: In most cases.
MR WOOD: In most cases, yes, I can accept that. That is a pretty substantial cost. I do not know if you have seen the Independent Living Centre, a very substantial undertaking, or the Life Education Centre at Holder Primary
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